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We all know a feeling of aliveness – when we are happy, yet, calm, when our heart resonates, when we feel most connected with life and when our humanity expands. At the same time, we are intrinsically linked to the order of life within us and around us – people, architecture, nature. We are constantly being created by this order – as much as we participate in creating this order. When we become aware of Aliveness and the role it plays in our endevours, we also become aware that co-creation works best in a collaborative space where there is “life”Continue Reading

Many people consider it a historical date: September 25th 2015 saw an agreement of 195 member countries of the United Nations to adopt what is known as 17 “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, a joint commitment to end poverty, ensure prosperity for all and protect the integrity of the planet. It has become clear since then that implementing the new global “ Agenda 2030” will require collaboration at scale between governments, corporations and civil society. Read more at Huffingtonpost… This blog post looks at the question of leadership for sustainability. For more information on the Art of Leading Collectively, checkout the inside the bookContinue Reading

Over my years of working in complex collaboration projects and institutional change management, I took notice of what shifted actors into a more collaborative space. Shifts tended to occur around personal competences. People brought these competences in or they developed them jointly with their collaborators. Although, nothing I noticed was radically new – what was new was the uniquely unfolding combinations of these competences, forming a constantly changing pattern of mutually supportive ingredients . And it was the aliveness of this presence that made a difference. In a stuffy room in Salvador de Bahia all the ingredients were there. Each participant had a very valid reason forContinue Reading

There are a techniques helping to develop mindfulness and they can be learnt. Although meditation can take us a long way towards mindfulness, there is more to it – at the core of mindfulness is the ability to become more than our own separate mind and feelings. When the mind finally becomes quite, it sets free other competences – compassion, gratitude, humility – as if these elements were quietly waiting to be set free. The key technique for mindfulness is mastering the mind and understanding that at the core of the human heart is love. If we access this placeContinue Reading

Finding our balance requires incorporating new techniques into our lives. There are many ways to get it right – from a regular workout at the Gym, to retreating into nature, to meditating or playing with our kids. Yet I believe we can go one step further in understanding how balance works and why. Can we simply learn from life? Balance requires a combination of three different energies in order to bring forth life, maintain its growth and take it to the next level. The first energy is our passion for life, for what we do, for how we relate to others. This passionContinue Reading

Wanting to make a difference for a better world is probably the most widely suppressed desire in organizations and among senior leaders. Beneath the surface of many high performing top executives is a vague disappointment with the competitiveness of the corporate world, and an unexpressed deep desire to create more meaning, more connectedness, and more relatedness. A senior manager from a multinational company told me “What I feel is that every person actually has a core that wants to serve … and it is more about uncovering it, because this gets silenced, cut off, nobody is asking for it, nobodyContinue Reading

Why is a change towards sustainability so slow to realize within most companies? Every change in an organization results from the choices made by dedicated people. Leaders are co-creators of an interconnected reality. There is hope that the leadership in global as well as local organizations will respond – out of a sense of interconnectedness and co-responsibility – to questions about human dignity, inclusiveness, and fairer distribution of wealth. In this way leadership might finally respond to the call for a sustainable world. A leader in a prominent position is bound to be a mirror for an organization. He or sheContinue Reading

A shift in thinking often precedes a change in action. This process is supported by collective narratives, which, for better or worse, help people to emotionally engage and create a different future. Narratives speak to the human capability to find meaning, and consciously and collectively shape the future. Therefore, when collective leadership decides to engage with transformative change we also need to engage with collective narratives. Through the lens of the dimensions of the Collective Leadership Compass, narratives co-creates a future that engenders responsibility and enacts future possibilities. But narratives also touch on other principles. They further the dimension of engagementContinue Reading

Let us examine a typical sustainability challenge: An agricultural commodity is produced in Africa – in a limited amount of countries. As is often the case, small-scale producing farmers are organized in cooperatives, but these cooperatives have competence gaps within their management. Moreover, there are also discrepencies in the trading and production aspects of this commodity. Many traders bring the commodity to each national commodity board. In one country all commodities needed to be auctioned, in another country they could be auctioned or could be traded directly to the buyers. And at the level of individual farms, practices may not beContinue Reading

Leadership paradigms often refer to only individual leaders and the expansion their individual skills. The collective has been missing in leadership development thus far. However, the challenges faced in most sustainability projects require us to go beyond the individual – and build the capacity of groups and systems. To move critical issues of common concern forward requires collective action, dialogue and collaboration. Moreover, most employee performance indicators do not measure the quality of collective human interaction. Yet, this is what counts most for results. We therefore need to shift from a self-centered consciousness to awareness of the larger whole. This capacity building will be theContinue Reading